Carole King has an armful of Grammy Awards and countless Top 10 hits, both under her own name and as a songwriter for artists from Little Eva to the Monkees to Aretha Franklin.

Her solo album Tapestry spent 15 weeks at the top of the charts, one of the biggest-selling records of all time. King managed to fit in all those hits by starting very, very young. She tells NPR's Renee Montagne that she was just 15 when she and some classmates put together a doo-wop group called the Co-Sines.

"We got the name off our math book," King says. The Co-Sines never made it big, but in just a few months, King was working as a professional songwriter, thanks to some advice from the famous disc jockey Alan Freed.